I didn’t say that story was perfect–it went too far off in the other direction, into the mundane. I’d like to discover some middle ground–I think that section of City of Bears is the best (and still imperfect) example of what I’m looking for. 

But like I said, I don’t really know what I’m trying to articulate, as I’ve said upfront here multiple times. Holding me fast to what I’m saying here is more you trying to play “gotcha!” with me and less trying to understand what I’m experiencing and what I’d like to do.

Well, let’s start off with two assumptions you just pelted me with that I want to question.

First, why in the world should porn stories be any less “stories” just because they are erotic? Is there something about including porn that necessarily makes them bad? Or is the audience’s standards so low, or so base, that the addition of a good plot and strong characters actually turns them off? If the former, I’d be really curious to know how something like Game of Thrones gets critical acclaim while including all of that “porn” in there, and if the latter, then that’s not really an audience I’m all that interested in supplying content to, and I’ll wait around for a different audience who might like a decent story to go with their erotica.

Second, characters in stories are never real people. But there are good characters and bad characters. I would say that good characters, in addition to having more complex motivations and being better able to foster an audience’s sympathy, are also capable of having much better, and more interesting sex, than bad characters. Why wouldn’t you want better characters in a story? I’m not trying to write real people here; none of this stuff can happen in real life, so why would I bother with real people. But better characterization? That’s something I can get behind.

Now, dispensing with those two assumptions which I disagree with, I might rephrase your question as something like, “Why should an author bother writing good stories with interesting characters when the primary reason people read these stories is to ‘get off’ (an act which presumably does not require a good story or interesting characters)?”

Well, that’s because I’d like my stories to do more than get people off. Granted, I do like getting people off–I have no intention of stopping that side of things. But maybe stories can also make people think. Maybe they can also have character’s they relate to and sympathize with. Maybe a story can be more than a neutral mask indulging in a variety of sexual experiences and physical and mental changes. That’s what I want to write at least–that might not be what you want to read.

That’s perfectly ok–if that sounds like an utter bore, than go read some other stuff–there’s plenty out there. But I’m going to focus on writing what I want to write–I’ll trust that an audience interested in what I have to deliver will find me and enjoy my stories.

Well, I’d love to, but part of the issue is that I don’t really know what I’m looking for or trying to explore–that’s the central problem. But I can point to some of the aspects of the genre I find more tiring than others–i.e. where the face to brick wall hurts the most.

* The biggest problem I’ve been facing is one of character–I’m getting tired of the rather limited motivations which the tropes of the genre rely on. You can only write so many “revenge”, “second-chance-at-life”, “self-betterment” stories before they all blur together into one thick morass. I’ve been trying to assuage this by shifting the focus away from the change itself–making it more incidental rather than necessary. That second sketch I did, with the biker and the guy towing the trailer, is an example of that. The change is there, but it’s unexplained and the motivation isn’t explicit. It lent the character’s a depth that I really liked, but haven’t really been able to reproduce consciously.

* My writing style is pretty fucking bland. Don’t get me wrong, it gets the job done, but I don’t really put nearly as much effort into craft as I can and should be doing. One quick edit for the most glaring typos doesn’t make a story read well, but I also can’t put as much effort into craft and put out as many stories as I was. I simply don’t have the time. These recent stories aren’t any better, mind you, but it’s something that’s been wearing on me all the same.

* A lot of this current ennui/dissatisfaction actually stems all the way back from when I was working on the third book of “City of Bears” in November 2012. I found myself in the midst of the story line of Matt and Terry, and I found these two character leading me in directions that I had not anticipated but they were developing into actual people, rather than characters who I just kind of manipulate on the page to get people’s rocks off. It scared me, at the time, but again, it was a sensation I haven’t really been able to reproduce, and that’s been wearing on me as well, trying to figure out what went right there, or what I’ve been getting wrong all this time.

* I’ve spent most of my time these last two years writing commissions, and one of the things that happens when you write down other people’s fantasies is that you lose sight of your own interests. It can make writing your own thing again really difficult, I’ve found (or at least for me, it has). As I’ve ramped down the commissions over the last year, I haven’t really found much inspiration to replace them. Writing these little shorts have been a way to try and jumpstart that creativity, but nothing’s really been working.

Those are just the few that come to mind right now. There are more of course, but I think those are the big things I’ve been trying to do lately.

Lol, no, I totally liked writing tl;dr answers before too.

Well, first of all, thank you for your concern (troll). I’m glad that you care enough about me and my writing to try and set me straight about a situation you know nothing about–it is just the greatest of kindnesses, I truly, truly appreciate it.

You’re right though, I do owe people more of an explanation for why I have been so lax on the whole “putting out seven caption stories a week plus working on my own personal stories plus working on commissions plus holding down a full time job plus running my own business plus maintaining a marriage and feeding and playing with three dogs plus trying to figure out what to do with my life” thing. But first, I want to go over a few things about your comment.

First thing: your comment here is functionally identical to the one I just criticized. You, the sender of the comment, are dissatisfied in some way with my posting on this blog. You, the sender, also have enough sense of entitlement to feel that I owe you products of your choosing–that by clicking and navigating about my blog here, carrying with you a certain set of expectations, I am duty bound to provide that content to you with no real tangible benefit on my end. Do you really feel like your eyeballs are that important to me? Do you really think that I write these stories so I can gain ‘respect’ or ‘acclaim’ or ‘good feelsies that people like my stories’? 

That’s not actually a benefit. Unlike most of tumblr (and this is something I have been reluctant to admit to myself over the last year) I really have a very hard time caring about making that little ‘followers’ number go up and up, and the number of ‘likes/reblogs’ any given story gets means less to me than how I personally feel about these stories, and whether I feel they are advancing my writing to a greater level. The numbers, the metrics, the comments, while nice and appreciated, are supplementary. They are not the reason I chose to put my writing out here into the vast interwebs. Your personal opinion is of minimal import, yet your sense of entitlement blinds you to that very obvious fact. I do not care that people read my stories–and they will read them whether or not I care about whether I read them. They will read them if they like them–and I have no interest in tethering my self-esteem to the preferences of a fluid and finicky audience like tumblr or any particular audience on any site. I could chase fads. I could squeeze out content that I don’t think is my best work, but which is enough for people to like or reblog, but that is something I simply have no interest in doing. My first and foremost goal is to write well; if I cannot gain my own acclaim, then everyone elses’ is simply worthless.

Second thing: your comment seems to support the notion that I ought to simply ignore trolls and post stories and be a more positive person. The positivity doctrine is implied, of course–but it’s there all the same. But what you have failed to realize in all of this is that, as much as the stories are fantasy, Wesley Bracken is a character too. He is a faux-person who I manipulate in online communities, who I hide behind. This arrangement was initially out of fear–and that fear lingers as a motivator. Not many people would like these stories linked to their real names. But there is a secondary motivation which has increased over the last year or so, and that is the realization that I can have Wes say things that I myself cannot. And this blog has become a place where, more than simply posting stories to get people off, I can present a sort of critique of a kind of worldview that I viscerally dislike, a worldview which, I might add, your comment hints that you subscribe to. 

It is also this worldview which has, over the past few months, sapped my creativity. I no longer feel any real desire to engage with it on a fictional basis–if anything, by current desires lie more along the lines of writing critical essays. That is what gives me pleasure, at the moment, because writing these stories was never solely about physical pleasure for me–it was about taking the kinds of people I despised and twisting them and their worlds into something new. It was ripping apart their identities and reassembling them into something they both could and could not recognize. It was about celebrating change–but not positive change, not the change of self-actualization, but chaotic change, change that can’t be controlled, that doesn’t place individuals on linear paths towards some unrealized ideal. It asserts a simpler fact–change is death. Change is, has been, and always will be death. These stories have been my way of exploring this notion from a variety of perspectives, but lately I have had the distinct feeling that the well has begun to run dry–but that is something I will discuss in more detail a bit further on.

Third thing: I paired those two questions up for good reason, and I answered them in the manner I did for particular reasons. The reasons I have for slowing down my schedule are personal, and they are long-winded, but more than anything, they are reasons that I don’t particularly care to share with many people right now. That said, I will share some of them anyway, but not in a particularly clear headed way, as I would prefer. Call it a rough draft, but it isn’t ready for easy consumption.

Now then, here are some of those *reasons*.

1.

This genre has appeared to me, more and more, like a philosophical dead end. That said, I know that it isn’t one, but until I discover the door through that I sense, writing more of these stories in their current form feels like I’m banging my face into a brick wall. Banging your face into a brick wall is not only not very pleasurable, it is usually counter-productive. It is very hard to find one’s way out of a dead end if one must constantly wipe the blood from one’s eyes.

2.

When I began writing in this genre, I had a number of excellent authors to mimic and steal from and use to develop my own style and stories. Onix, Peircedskin, and E. S. Morwood all stood as they great examples of what I could do with these stories. Now, however, none of these great writers have produced much of anything new (with the exception of Peircedskin, and only then after some severe nagging). Writing within a genre alone is a boring thing, and I came to realize that part of what I have been missing are people to write *with*. I also realized that the reason I started writing these stories in the first place is because I could no longer find the stories I wanted to read–so I had decided to write my own to fill that perceived gap. 

I had a worrisome thought–was I, at least partially–the cause of this dearth of other authors? Had I become so prolific that I was satisfying enough of the audience’s need, all on my own, to suppress others’ need to contribute their own work? This is, probably, me thinking far too highly of myself. More likely, this busy schedule had simply sucked away any time I might have had to find and read other authors working in the genre. Yet there was really only one way to find out–I had to cut back either way, I had to remove the water from the well and see if other people would start supplying it, or had been supplying plenty all along, and people did start supplying it/have been supplying it You are one fine example. Bad Dirty Trickster is another. I’m exhausted of the routine–I do not have the energy right now to put out the amount of content that I have been. And not putting out content has allowed other authors a chance to step out and gain recognition. I cannot say with any certainty that me stepping back enabled you and others to step forward–most likely they were not connected in the least. But not having to carry that burden all by myself is a relief all the same.

3.

With no one else to read, or rather, with few author’s whose works I found compelling within the genre, at the moment, I have felt…at a bit of a loss about what to write next. There is a very nice Ira Glass quote about taste that sums up much of what I have been feeling as of late. I feel like, for a long while, I had writing that I could look up to and admire and strive to be, but lately, I look at my own writing and I realize that I am still unsatisfied with it for a wide variety of reasons, but when I look for an example of what I’d *like* to write, there does not seem to be anything that I admire. It is the sensation of forgetting a word that you should know, in the back of your head, and it never leaves me as I write these stories now. This notion that I am missing something key, something important. I have managed to produce glimpses of it in some of my recent sketches, but nothing substantial. In my heart, I know that the only way past this sensation is to write more, and try to capture that word through effort, but the more effort I put in, the more I slam my head into that brick wall I mentioned earlier. It has become a catch-22. If I do not write, I know that I will never reach the level of taste that I desire, but the more I keep writing stories which I consider to be lackluster and mired in a genre which I worry might have no real future, I become increasingly discouraged that such an ideal might be achievable, and blind myself to my own progress towards it.

*

I sincerely hope that these answers are not satisfactory to you. They are not satisfactory to me. But that is a glimpse into the personal, long-winded reasons for why I have cut back my own output. As for making myself look the fool–of course I look the fool. Writing is a fool’s errand, a mission only fools take. You are a fool too–and the sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be.

1.

You’re a fucking homonationalist, shut the fuck up.

If you don’t know what homonationalism is, it is the phenomenon where individuals who conform to the vast majority of privileged cultural norms (i.e. some majority combination of white, cis, masculine presenting, abled, normal body typed, middle/upper class, monogamous, and male) find themselves slowly being admitted into the privileged class. It is now, more than at any other time in this century or last century, ok to be gay. Or, it’s ok to be gay and also be white, cis, masculine presenting, middle/upper class, abled, normal body typed, and male. It still pretty much sucks for anyone else who doesn’t reside within all of those other categories.

Now, the homonationalist realizes that they have reached the privileged class, and perfectly satisfied with their own feat, turns around, pulls up the ladder, and joins the chorus of the privileged. They are the Other, they are freaks, and different, and they must be reminded of their difference at every moment, and disadvantaged on the basis of that difference. For the homonationalist, their own individual privilege is enough for them, and many of them have harbored a deep resentment towards the Other they can now disparage freely.

“I have more in common with the privileged than with the rest of the movement,” they say to themselves. They harbor a resentment not towards the system of oppression, but towards the rest of the movement for hindering their own person progress. “Why can’t the rest of you act normal! Like me!” It is their fault that they aren’t accepted–and it is their fault that you haven’t been accepted all this time as well. Their difference is a slime that has covered you for so long, you have tried to wash it away, and yet your association with all of these Others has plagued you. Now, you are finally free–you are recognized by the privileged as someone they should have privileged all along.

You are being accepted now, because you have always deserved to be and the Others are not recognized because never had any chance of curing themselves of that plague. And so, you are free to discriminate as much as you would like against them, something which should have always been your right. 

2.

That was, perhaps, unfair. You know what? Let’s try things your way. Let’s follow this logic of yours to it’s proper conclusion. Here we are, in the MC/TF genre, so lets suppose that from now on, I write my stories about conventional body types only. But how long until I get someone asking me why I only write stories about GAY PEOPLE? GAY PEOPLE are gross, after all, my stories would be much hotter if they were about straight people.

What can I do? Following your logic, I must cede the point–how can I possibly challenge it, if your logic is sound?

Or perhaps your logic is a bigoted, stinking pile of bullshit. Perhaps you need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that not everyone experiences the world in the same way that you do, and that your perspective is not by it’s very nature somehow more privileged than the perspective of others.

Oh there I go, being unfair again. My apologies.

3.

But at least you meant no offense. I believe you–you meant me, the author Wesley Bracken, no offense. But only me. I’m sure that when you sent this, and when I posted it, you intended to offend someone, or rather, a large group of individuals whose bodies lie outside the spectrum of body types that you deem to be physically attractive.

You intended for this comment to remind them that just because I write stories featuring their bodies in a positive light, that the wider world still views them with scorn and disgust, and wishes that they would be starved skinny. You sought to remind them that they aren’t ever going to be privileged in society. That their body type will always mark them for humiliation and exclusion, that you will never accept them, and furthermore, you will work to further outcast them by urging those few people who don’t view them as disgusting to adopt your perspective, because to do otherwise would violate a personal, natural order of things.

Yes, no offense intended, yet plenty of offense taken, so don’t worry. 

4.

You seem scared.

Perhaps it’s your reluctance to use punctuation, which gives your passage a hurried voice, like you want all of the words to get out immediately so you can leave the room before your speech can reach anyone’s ears. Before anyone has the awareness to respond.

Perhaps it’s the fact that, twice, you wanted to ward yourself from counter-attack.

“No offense…no offense.”

But you do seem scared, or perhaps threatened. Perhaps desperate is the term I’m looking for? Does the fact that I don’t hate fat men, does the fact that I consider their bodies to be beautiful, does that frighten you? Does that, for some reason, bring some visceral fear to your throat, that encouraged you to send me this note?

I only ask because I am curious. I can only speculate that the realization that someone who’s art you admire might perceive the world in a vastly dissimilar way than yours terrifies you. Or perhaps its the fact that my stories target the privileged and twist them into something unrecognizable that leaves you unsettled and disgusted and ill at ease? Is the problem that you see yourself only in the men who die in my stories, and never the men who are born? Always the changed, always the target, but never the result? That would imply, after all, that I might consider you to be something which requires improvement, it might challenge the deep seated belief you hold in your own superiority and privilege which has always been denied to you by society at large.

Do my stories show you how ugly you are?

Is that why you seem so scared?

Probably not anytime soon, for a number of reasons that are a bit too long-winded and/or too personal to put out right now.

You’re very welcome, just don’t do anything too crazy lol.